Using JSON keys as attributes in nested JSON

Question

I\'m working with nested JSON-like data structures in python 2.7 that I exchange with some foreign perl code. I just want to \'work with\' these nested structures of lists and

Answer 1

I think you're making this more complex than it needs to be. If I understand you correctly, all you should need to do is this:

import json

class Struct(dict):
    def __getattr__(self, name):
        return self[name]

    def __setattr__(self, name, value):
        self[name] = value

    def __delattr__(self, name):
        del self[name]

j = '{"y": [2, 3, {"a": 55, "b": 66}], "x": 4}'

aa = json.loads(j, object_hook=Struct)

for i in aa.y:
    print(i)

When you load JSON, the object_hook parameter lets you specify a callable object to process objects that it loads. I've just used it to turn the dict into an object that allows attribute access to its keys. Docs

Answer 2

There is an attrdict library that does exactly that in a very safe manner, but if you want, a quick and dirty (possibly leaking memory) approach was given in this answer:

class AttrDict(dict):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(AttrDict, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.__dict__ = self

j = '{"y": [2, 3, {"a": 55, "b": 66}], "x": 4}'
aa = json.loads(j, object_hook=AttrDict)

Answer 3

I found the answer: There is intentionally no way to automatically map the special methods in python, using __getattribute__. So to achieve what I want, I need to explicitely define all special methods like __len__ one after the other.